frisbeepiphany.

I'm playing frisbee with my nephew Adam, son of my brother Knocker. Adam is describing to me the way to throw a frisbee. The description involves a demonstration of proper frisbee-throwing technique and form and finally culminates in an even and completely mis-aimed throw. "Sorry about that," he says. "Sometimes I miss."

"It's okay," I say, because it is, "You just need more practice." Then I remember something from my childhood and wonder if Adam knows the answer to the question that I then put to him, "Hey, Adam! What does practice make?"

"Better." Of course he knows. He's Knocker's son, and I distinctly remember Knocker correcting me once when I was little, saying that practice did not make perfect, practice makes better. After querying Adam, Knocker laughed that I knew what practice makes, thinking that I had heard it from some other brother. I told him that he had told me when I was little. "Man, I've been saying that a long time."

"Practice makes perfect" is not technically correct. Without getting too far into the question of whether actual perfection is ever really attained, we can all agree that it isn't always attained, even with a lot of practice. I practiced basketball for five seasons, in two hour sessions five days a week. I never made it to perfect, and it would be very debatable to say that I even made it to adequate. But I got better.

I decided long ago that I agreed with "Practice makes better." And then this morning I started wondering why Knocker came up with it in the first place. Maybe he doesn't believe in humans attaining perfection. Maybe he heard it from someone else. Or maybe there was some tragic incident where he practiced, practiced, practiced and still didn't make it to Carnegie Hall. Then he was disillusioned, because someone had told him that practice makes perfect, and he had practiced, so therefore he should be perfect. But he wasn't. He was only better. Young Knocker concluded that the phrase was then wrong, or at least misleading. Q.E.D.

I feel like the practice-makes-better story is a Knocker-defining one. I could tell the story to someone who knows Knocker, and they would laugh, nod, and say, "Yeah, that sounds like him." Everyone in my family likes to be technically correct, and I suppose it wouldn't be too far off the mark to call us perfectionists, but I've always felt like Knocker beat us all out at it. Maybe he just practiced more.

But I find, and I suspect Knocker does, too, comfort in correctness. Not popular, not even necessarily right, but correct. It is logically sound and you cannot really argue against it, even when it borders on silliness. I might win on a technicality, but I win. I may be stumbling blindly through life just like everyone else, but at least I know the truth about practice and what it really makes.

But for all the comfort I get out of that, I am realizing that being correct isn't everything, and in most cases, it isn't anything. While I still appreciate correctness and I admire other people who appreciate it, by and large, it is missing the point. It is small picture, not big, and it is trees, not forest. See? I know that. I am making improvement. Though I have no hopes of ever achieving perfection, every day I get a little more practice at life.

And I'm getting better.